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© Alexey Novikov | Dreamstime.com

Executives and logistics planners at some 1,400 US firms had their weekend wrecked, courtesy of FedEx Freight.

On Friday, the company notified customers it would no longer pick up their shipments, starting Monday.

The integrator’s trucking arm said the sudden measure constituted “customer-specific actions to control capacity ...

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  • Gary Ferrulli

    June 17, 2021 at 4:10 pm

    What does a manufacturing firm do with a product that proves to be unprofitable? What do retailers do with products that don’t sell? This isn’t a unique situation, it’s a business and someone made a business decision. done every day of the week, just that transport has a dozen or so publications daily that have to write about something.

  • David Herring

    June 17, 2021 at 5:16 pm

    What do manufacturing companies with products that turn out to be unprofitable? Or retail firms who have products that don’t sell?

    This is no different, they’ve made a business decision the same as virtually anyone who wants to stay in business does. Give more support to the profitable lines of business, and less to the least profitable business.

    There are too many periodicals and publications on cargo transportation that disrespect the industry with “attack” articles like this one.

  • Enrique Romero

    June 19, 2021 at 2:16 pm

    The Pandemic has fundamentally changed the world and it has not reverted.

    This is a realization in every aspect of our lives, yet people forget this when complaining about the manufacturing and transportation sectors being backlogged.

    Backlogs that are caused by rising consumer demand amidst organizations operating with a fraction of the staffing required for normal volume levels–much less operating beyond capacity.

    It would seem this author is looking to generate revenue quickly with this myopic clickbait type write up which has a hit piece type title that touches on the what without any whys or hows.

    Here are some key missing bullet points which will help add context which is missing here:
    * Driven by pandemic related consumer demand (see above blurb)
    * UPS exited the Freight business, where do you think some of the displaced customers went?
    * Which were the congested lane segments that impacted shippers?
    * No mention of the Old Dominion Embargo
    * No mention of how this years stimulus packages have prolonged people returning to work.

    In summary, times are tough and despite all the rhetoric and moral imperatives…we still have to deal with the math.
    There are real limitations that exist because of the lack of staffing resources.